American Elephants

Many of us have noticed that the Democratic Party has changed significantly. Congressional Democrats used to cooperate on many issues and bipartisan votes were common. But here we were yesterday on the Fourth of July, fireworks, barbecues and beer, and sparklers for the kids, and we have Democrats demanding that we confiscate all guns (Matt Damon), bellyaching about God Bless America (Gersh Kuntzman), just after Democrats in Congress had engaged in a silly sit-in, despite plenty of empty chairs.

Hillary has released a plan to call for all families earning less than $125,000 to receive free college tuition. She did say it wasn’t right for” Donald Trump’s kids” to attend college for free.  She’s also pushing for Medicare for all, apparently unaware that Medicare is on the verge of collapse.

It’s immediately clear that Hillary never studied economics. But that’s where the Democratic Party has changed. The hard left are ideologues. They are right, their opinions are right, Democrat talking points are right, and they don’t have to bother with knowing anything about history or economics or math or the Constitution or world affairs either.

Hillary and the other leaders of the Democratic Party talk a lot about rights. They want to grant new rights to Americans — the “right to a college education,” the right to affordable health care,” the “right to a living wage.” But just last week they wanted to deny the right to buy a gun to anyone on the “no fly” list. And just a week or so ago, an Air Marshal admitted that they just put random people on the no-fly list because they have quotas to fulfill.

And there’s this little thing called due process which means that you cannot take anyone’s rights away without a judge and a court of law. “The Second Amendment needs some changing, because Americans don’t agree with it and we’ve had it,” (Rep. Mike Doyle D-PA).

Democrats don’t like the First Amendment either.They quite specifically do not want anyone to be allowed to disagree with them. A majority of Democrats said in a YouGov poll last May that they support government limits on what they consider to be “hate speech.” California Democrats pushed a state bill that would have criminalized speech that questioned the “consensus” on climate change.Attorney General Loretta Lynch told the Senate Judiciary Committee in March that she has discussed the possibility of civil actions against “climate change deniers.”

The Democratic Party unveiled its 2016 national platform last Friday. They promise to put “a middle-class life within the reach of more Americans.” They are quite sure that America’s most serious problem is “income inequality.”

“At a time of massive income and wealth inequality,” it states, “we believe the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations must pay their fair share in taxes.”

One of the reasons for so many American businesses moving to other countries is that we have one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, and it is also one of the reasons why the economy has not recovered in the past eight years.

It is now official Democratic Party policy to call for the Department of Justice to investigate any energy companies who “mislead” shareholders about global warming, and a proposal to investigate alleged corporate fraud on the part of fossil fuel companies who have reportedly misled shareholders and the public on the scientific reality of climate change was also adopted by unanimous consent. I’ll also bet that not one of the platform committee has ever read any climate science whatsoever.

They want to make American corporations “pay their fair share” and make American companies pay U. S. taxes immediately on foreign profits. Most countries don’t even tax profits made outside their borders.

On education, they pledge more resources for “pre-K to 12 schools in every zip code”, though there is no evidence anywhere that spending more improves the schools. It just makes the teachers’ unions happy.  Kids should not be forced to attend the schools in their own zip code either. They also want immigration preference for relatives of people already here. Emphasis on family ties brings in  unemployable people and unskilled workers.

We had a recession when Barack Obama took office, but the Federal Reserve declared it over in 2009, in June if I remember correctly. But the economy has not really improved in the seven  years since, nor has it recovered.  There is not the slightest evidence that Hillary can or would do anything to help the ranks of the unemployed. Her monumental failure of the situation in Libya does not bode well for dealings with ISIS or the Taliban. Since she seems to have absorbed nothing from her experience as a senator or as Secretary of State, we’re left with the need to elect her because she is the first woman, or because it’s her turn, or because she has an unusual ability to avoid potential prison terms.